November 27 News Items

Space Station Ready for Atlantis Visit (Source: Florida Today)
The International Space Station is ready to host Atlantis, now scheduled for a Dec. 6 launch, according to the ISS Flight Readiness Review that met Tuesday in Houston. "No issues. They were good with pressing ahead," said NASA spokesman James Hartsfield. At a readiness review on Friday at Kennedy Space Center, shuttle program managers are expected to give final approval to the 4:31 p.m. EST Dec. 6 launch. The early December launch is possible because the space station crew has performed two robotic relocations and two spacewalks since Discovery delivered the Harmony module in October. The module and docking port are operational.

NASA's Most Serious Management and Performance Challenges (Source: SpaceRef.com)
According to NASA's Inspector General, the five most serious management and performance challenges facing the agency include: 1) Transitioning from the Space Shuttle to the Next Generation of Space Vehicles; 2) Managing Risk to People, Equipment, and Mission; 3) Financial Management; 4) Information Technology (IT) Security; and 5) Acquisition and Contracting Processes. Visit http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.nl.html?pid=26136 to view the article.

Embry-Riddle Establishes McNair Scholars Program (Source: ERAU)
Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University will receive a four-year $879,596 grant from the U.S. Department of Education for a McNair Scholars Program. Named for fallen Challenger astronaut Dr. Ronald McNair, the McNair Scholars Program will prepare undergraduate students from disadvantaged backgrounds for doctoral study, with the ultimate goal of increasing the number of underrepresented students obtaining doctorates. The grant will allow Embry-Riddle to assist 25 McNair Scholars each year.

SeaLaunch Reschedules the Thuraya-3 Launch Campaign (Source: SeaLaunch)
Due to unusually strong ocean currents at the launch site, Sea Launch is rescheduling the launch campaign for the Thuraya-3 satellite. The team is establishing an extended schedule for the Thuraya-3 mission, as the vessels return to Sea Launch Home Port. All personnel are doing well and all systems and the spacecraft are secure.

US plans GPS Upgrade to Rival Galileo (Source: AFP)
The US military is working on super-powerful updates to its GPS satellite navigation technology to try to trump the rival European Galileo project which just received key funding, experts say. Galileo is now set to be deployed by 2013. But in a bid to maintain its economic and military edge in the sector, the United States has been preparing to wheel out GPS III satellites, the most significant upgrade to its Global Positioning System since it was first launched in the 1990s.

Small Satellite Specialist SSTL is for Sale (Source: Space News)
Britain's Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd. (SSTL), arguably the world's most successful builder of small satellites, has been put on the auction block by its owner, the University of Surrey, in a sale that is likely to occur by spring, according to SSTL Managing Director Sir Martin Sweeting.

Northrop, Raytheon Stay in Hunt for GPS Ground Segment (Source: Space News)
The U.S. Air Force awarded contracts worth $160 million each to Northrop Grumman Corp. and Raytheon Co. Nov. 21 to continue design work on the ground control segment for the next generation of GPS navigation and positioning satellites.

Situational Awareness, Protection Top USAF Space Control Priorities (Source: Aerospace Daily)
Improved situational awareness and protection capabilities are the top two priorities for the U.S. Air Force's growing space control efforts in the fiscal 2009 budget cycle. In the area of protection, the Pentagon, intelligence community and commercial users have developed a "neighborhood watch," whereby users exchange data on anomalies or operations on orbit. This helps diagnose jamming or other tampering when they occur and also helps narrow down sources of satellite interference if they are natural or unintended.

In the area of space situational awareness, Air Force Space Command is studying how to better use existing sensors and what new systems may be needed to properly monitor activities in space. Congress added $100 million to a variety of space situational awareness efforts in the recently approved FY '08 budget. A topline increase is needed for Air Force space efforts in FY '09 to handle these and other initiatives. Among them are a cost overrun in the Space-Based Infrared System high and the addition of a fourth Advanced Extremely High Frequency satellite, which could cost up to $1.2 billion.

Space Vs. Education (Source: MSNBC)
Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s education policy is causing a stir … but not all in a good way. Advocates for space exploration are noting with dismay that he’d take billions of dollars from NASA to pay for the educational programs he'd like to expand. The first years of an Obama administration would be particularly critical for NASA, because that's the time frame during which the shuttle fleet is due to retire. The schedule already calls for the space agency to hitch rides into orbit on other people's spaceships for up to four years, and if Obama follows through that gap could go for years longer - even assuming that Constellation goes into hurry-up mode if and when the budgetary spigots are opened wider.

USA Today quoted the Illinois senator as defending his plan to put NASA's vision on hold: "We're not going to have the engineers and the scientists to continue space exploration if we don't have kids who are able to read, write and compute," he said. "That would be very destructive," rocket scientist Robert Zubrin said. "There's so much more we could do for education by having a visionary space program than by just throwing it away into the educational bureaucracy."

Editorial: An Overpriced Piece of Pie in the Sky (Source: Times Online)
Europe is heading for the worst of all worlds in its high-minded determination to press ahead with Galileo, the satellite navigation system that it believes should rival the US Global Positioning System. The European Union is paying too much (of taxpayers’ money) for an overcomplicated system that doesn’t yet work, in which private companies have refused to take part, and which may be overtaken by its rivals before it starts. In the deal thrashed out last week, it is dividing the enterprise into six, not for reasons of engineering or competitiveness, but simply so that a slice can go to each of the main donors (one might as well use the vocabulary of development aid, as that is what the project is).

In conception, Galileo was not a disaster. It was sensible to think of developing a rival to the US system, given that the normal commercial dangers of losing that competition were always there. The best that can be said is that it has already prompted the US to improve GPS. But the EU’s decisions display its least commercial reflexes.